History of MITSA Lab
Background
The students, faculty, and staff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been
involved in glider flying, off and on, since 1910.
The first American glider pilot to compete internationally, Eddie Allen, brought an MIT
glider to the 1922 meet in Clermont-Ferrand, France. In 1941, Walter Lob, flying the
MIT Franklin PS-2, won the National Soaring Contest in Elmira, New York. Jimmy
Doolittle and Charles Stark Draper flew gliders while at MIT. Other successful pilots
with roots at MIT include Bertha Ryan, Sam Francis, John Hansman, Jim Nash-Webber,
Rand Baldwin, Dave Nadler, and John Cochrane.
Of course, MIT is better known for its track record in aeronautical engineering than in
glider racing. In the footsteps of Doolittle and Draper, MIT engineers and glider pilots
Jim Nash-Webber, Ed Crawley, John Langford, Harold Youngren, Judah Milgram, and
Mark Drela have made significant contributions in the fields of low-speed aerodynamics,
rotors, propellers, and human-powered flight.
The MIT Aeronautical Engineering Society, which owned and operated the gliders,
became dormant in the 1950s. The modern club, renamed the MIT Soaring Association,
was re-established in 1968 by T. Guy Spencer and Art LaPointe. MITSA, a fully
sanctioned off-campus activity, received annual financial support from the Institute.
In those days, most of the members of MITSA were students in the MIT Department of
Aeronautics and Astronautics. In addition to financial support, MIT provided MITSA
with access to laboratory equipment and facilities, including the Wright Brothers Wind
Tunnel. A small group of graduate student/glider pilots became interested in variometry,
altimetry, and calibration of flight instruments.
“MITSA Lab” began in 1976 as a group of graduate students researching the behavior of
total energy probes in the wind tunnel and in glider flight tests.
Formal Approval
MITSA Lab had been calibrating MITSA altimeters and barographs informally for at
least a year when it decided to seek formal approval for this service from NAA/SSA.
In March 1978 the Lab was inspected in accordance with the SSA Membership
Handbook by the SSA Region One Director, Sam Francis (SSA 240893), professional
engineering consultant, competition pilot, designated pilot examiner, and future vicepresident of SSA. The Lab met all of the criteria for a Category One calibration station
except the requirement to be a federally approved facility. Notification of the Lab’s
approval was mailed to SSA Headquarters in Santa Monica, California. MITSA Lab was
included as an approved Category Two Barograph Calibration Station in the next
publication of the SSA Membership Handbook (1980) and in subsequent editions of the
Handbook.
Equipment
The original vacuum chamber and pump were donated by MIT’s Fluid Mechanics
Laboratory. The Lab’s approval required the use of either a calibrated altimeter traceable
to NBS, or a mercury manometer. Unable to fund the calibrated altimeter, the Lab built a
manometer with a resolution of 0.5 mmHg. The manometer is still in existence.
Activities
MITSA Lab calibrated barographs for New England glider pilots for about ten years.
The Lab moved from MIT to Chelmsford, Massachusetts, and then to Post Mills,
Vermont.
Highlights in MITSA Lab’s history include calibrating Ed Replogle’s barograph at the
1981 Region One contest, calibrating the barograph used in one of Tom Knauff’s
National O&R Records, and calibrating the flight recorder used in John Good’s World
Distance Record.
In 1988 the fifth and most successful of MIT’s human-powered airplanes, Daedalus 88,
flew 72 miles from Crete to Santorini, setting the current world distance record for this
category of aircraft. The project, led by MITSA Lab founder Steven Bussolari, received
support from many sources, including the glider instrument company, Cambridge Aero
Instruments. (CAI has had a long relationship with MIT. MITSA member Raouf Ismael
named his company after his dual relationships with Cambridge University and MIT, in
Cambridge Massachusetts).
The human-powered airplane project also led to the employment of HPA pilot and
MITSA Lab founder Rick Sheppe by Cambridge Aero Instruments. The Cambridge
Aero team solved the problem of building calibratable electronic pressure transducers for
glider flight computers, and later, flight recorders.
Cambridge Aero Instruments developed the standards for GPS flight recording and
persuaded IGC to adopt those standards. Along the way, CAI received the first IGC
approval for a FR in 1996.
As attention in the gliding community drifted away from barographs and toward flight
recorders, MITSA Lab received fewer and fewer requests for calibrations. However, the
new approval of CAI as a calibration station for flight recorders was based directly on the
techniques, experience and expertise of MITSA Lab. Cambridge calibrated over 1100
flight recorders (and a few barographs) between 1996 and 2001. The engineers at
Cambridge served as consultants to IGC in the development of the Technical
Specifications for Flight Recorders document.
When CAI was sold in 2002, MITSA Lab resumed operations as an independent entity in
Vermont. This was done mostly as a response to the demand for rapid-turnaround repairs
and calibrations of Cambridge flight recorders for use in national and international
competitions.
MITSA Lab has traditionally supported the US Team with free calibrations and has
consequently become recognized around the world by contest organizers, and by IGC.
MITSA Lab provided all the needed calibrations for the US Team at the 1999, 2001,
2003, and 2006 World Gliding Championships. In 2008, the Lab traveled to the Senior
Championships in Clermont, Florida where it calibrated a few dozen flight recorders. All
proceeds (approximately $800) were donated to the US Team.
If you count the Cambridge years, MITSA Lab is the oldest continuously operated
barograph calibration station in the United States.
Attachments follow.
The next page shows a copy of page 301 of the 1980 SSA Membership Handbook.
From the May, 2008 issue of Soaring: